Friday, August 16, 2013

Topsy: Thomas Edison electrocuted an innocent elephant 1903

Topsy: New book tells how Thomas Edison
electrocuted an innocent elephant at Coney Island By Michael Daly /
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Topsy the elephant was innocent!

In a tale that interweaves the electrocution of a gentle giant with the
electrification of America and the rise of the big top circus, “Topsy,”
by Michael Daly, reports that the elephant of the title was not the
serial man-killer portrayed by those seeking to justify her wrongful
execution.

The book also discredits the myth that
her electrocution at Luna Park in Coney Island in 1903 was part of
Thomas Edison’s fight for supremacy over George Westinghouse in the War
of Currents. The Great Wizard had already lost that epic battle.

Topsy details the ill-fated elephant’s death and a life blighted by
struggles between historic giants of the human herd. The book recounts
how Topsy was smuggled into America as a baby during the raucous
competition between the irrepressible P.T. Barnum and the ruthless Adam
Forepaugh for circus supremacy and how she met her end after the bitter
fight between a desperate Edison and a resolute Westinghouse.

The electrocution was for Edison a
means to vent his fury and frustration over his defeat, as well as an
opportunity to film the first death of any kind. Electrocuting an
Elephant is on YouTube and present day viewers can note her docility to
the very end. Topsy had in truth killed just once and only after
decades of torment that culminated with a circus follower throwing a lit
cigar in her mouth. Her subsequent owners found her to be not so much a
danger as an inconvenience.

The human heroes of “Topsy” are two
enlightened trainers who proved that kindness achieves more than
cruelty. The book’s other figures from circus history include a
refreshments vendor who was caught short of water during a rush and
grabbed a tub where a rider was soaking a pair of pink tights. The
result was the first pink lemonade.

What follows is an excerpt
from Topsy, describing her execution on January 4, 1903 at the original
Luna Park in Coney Island: BY MICHAEL DALY

The wires were
dragged over. Topsy immediately complied when she was instructed to
raise her right foot for the first death sandal.“Not so vicious,” a
reporter remarked aloud.

Topsy seemed less a wild animal than a
mild one. Another reporter later wrote, “She stood still in the
application as quietly as could be asked, obeying all commands of the
men even when telling her to get down on her knees.”

After the
second electrode was fitted on her rear left foot and she was again
standing,Topsy did become mildly bothered. She shook off the electrode
on her forefoot, but soon it was secured again and there she stood,
nearly three decades after being torn from her mother and smuggled into
America, where she had traveled tens of thousands of miles in perpetual
servitude, endured innumerable beatings, and survived more than a dozen
train wrecks. Her big dark eyes with their extravagant elephantine
lashes glimmered with what a reporter discerned to be still at her core.

“There was real benevolence in her eyes and kindness in her manner,” the Tribune reported.The amusement park’s press agent
stepped up to act out the ultimate metaphor for his profession, feeding
Topsy three carrots filled with a total of 460 grams of potassium
cyanide. She took and gobbled one after another, playfully curling her
trunk. The motion picture camera had been shifted around so that
Topsy was in center frame and one of the cloth banners on the platform
was in full view over her left shoulder.

If the gobbling of the carrots was filmed, it never made public view.
The Edison crew was there to film, and the Luna Park people were there
to stage, an electrocution, not a poisoning. The big worry was that the
cyanide might cause her to collapse before the electricity brought her
down. The third carrot was no sooner swallowed than the Edison plant got
the awaited signal on the phone.

“All right!”

The
camera was running and recorded Topsy again trying to shake off the
electrode on her right forefoot. The electrode stayed in place. She set
her foot back down and was standing motionless when the 6,600 volts
coursed through the wires and the electrician, Thomas, closed the switch
at the park. There were flashes and small blue flames and then smoke
began to curl up from where copper met foot. Some would describe the
smell as that of burning flesh, others that of burning hoof. The pain
must have been excruciating and her huge form shook violently.

“Turn the current off!” a Luna employee cried out.

The smoke rose up around her flanks and she pitched forward into it,
tipping to the right as her right foreleg buckled. The chain on her left
leg grew taut with the fall, restraining her even in her last instant,
drawing the limb straight out, displaying the electrode at the bottom of
the foot. The electrode had stopped smoking. The current had been
turned off after ten seconds.

Once the motion picture camera
stopped filming, the donkey engine was set to work, cinching the noose
tight around Topsy’s neck and holding it tight for a full ten minutes.
Only then, when she had been triply killed and there was not the
slightest chance that she was alive, did the three veterinary surgeons
approach and pronounce her dead.

Topsy was measured and it was
recorded that she was ten feet tall and ten feet, eleven inches long.
The autopsy was then performed on the spot. The heart and stomach were
removed for the biology department at Princeton University. The
taxidermist Hubert Vogelsang began skinning her. Some of the hide would
be used to cover Thompson’s office chair and two of the legs would be
fashioned into umbrella holders. Thompson would tell people that the
hide and leg came from the world-famous Jumbo. The head was buried in a
remote, unmarked patch behind the stables.

The many witnesses to the electrocution
concurred that Topsy had died without making a sound. There is no way
of knowing if, in those final instants, she had made one of those cries
below the level of human hearing, which a scientist of the next
millennium would term a contact call and explain as a simple message
elephants in the wild send to other elephants across great distances of
savannah and jungle. Such a cry would have carried past the gawkers and
across the grounds and the beach beyond and out over the sea, fading to
an unheard whisper over the waves. “Here I am! Here I am! Where are you?”